


Advent

by Anna__S



Category: The Mindy Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:00:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2647802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re living out very different movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately following Diary of a Mad Indian Woman.

_November 19th  
_

 

That night he lies next to her, but he doesn’t sleep. His arms are tucked around her waist, his nose pressed into the hollow under her chin. With each undignified snore, a curl of black hair flutters against his face. 

The skin of her neck is butter soft and for a second, he imagines himself sinking into that softness, allowing all the edges to melt away. 

He closes his eyes, visions of sugarplums and calendars dancing through his head. He counts the days down until Christmas and wishes he knew what he was counting down to. 

 

* * *

  

_December 2nd  
_

For the first time in his long life, he gets a Christmas card from his father, and it’s starting to feel like this holiday season has been intentionally designed to enrage him.  _Happy Ho-ho-ho-holidays!_ is plastered across the front, above a photo of the three of them in matching festive sweaters and reindeer ears.

He gazes down at his dad’s smiling face, still familiar and not-familiar, as if a stranger were wearing his mask. A hot jolt of rage and something else, something that feels a lot like jealousy, runs through him.

With a jerky gesture that knocks his glasses off his nose, he chucks the card into the garbage. 

He’s spent a lifetime setting himself against his father, wanting to be the opposite of everything he ever was. If he’s not trying to be not his father, he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be. And now even his father’s successes seem designed to make him fail.  It seems impossibly unfair that without ever making a meaningful appearance in his life, his father has managed to make himself the bitter center of it.

There’s a click as his door swings open, because apparently knocking is out of fashion.  And there must be something in his face that gives him away, because she immediately asks him what’s wrong. 

“Nothing. I got a card from my dad.”

“What did it say?” she asks, her eyes widening.

“I didn’t read it,” he says, trying to keep his voice casual and completely failing.  He kicks at the desk leg, jamming his toe against the floor. 

“Do you want to read it?” she asks.

“You read it,” he says, pulling it from the garbage can. 

She wipes off paper clippings and opens it. Almost instantly, her mouth curves into a deep smile.  She flips it up so he can see that the inside is completely filled with childish handwriting. 

“Danny, this is so sweet. Are you sure you don’t want to read it?” He shakes his head once, then again, more slowly.

“Okay, well then how about I’ll put it in your drawer and you can read it whenever you feel ready?” 

He opens his mouth to argue but nothing comes out. She clasps his hand, giving him a comforting squeeze.

“Okay,” he finally manages, his voice coming out like a bubble, high and then low.  “Thanks, Min.”

 

* * *

 

_December 5th_

 

He wakes up and knows that this is a mistake. It’s too early. There are still so many things they don’t know about each other. He can’t think of any right now, but he knows they must be there. He's spent too many years tucking pieces of himself away, pretending they don't exist.  

She calls him family now, but he's not sure they're using that word in the same way.  

Even if he thought he could do this, she’ll want a big gesture.  Something over the top and glittery, like her, and nothing like him. Something that takes planning, confidence, clarity. 

Before Mindy, he thought he knew what the rest of his life would look like. Now, he’s not so sure, and he still hasn’t decided if that’s a good thing. 

  

 

* * *

 

_December 16th_

Over his vehement protests, Mindy plays Love Actually for the third time that month. 

“We’re a new couple, Danny,” she says in her peppiest voice.  “And couples need traditions.”

She wriggles next to him on the couch, her head tucked into his shoulder. “Isn’t it crazy, that we’re finally celebrating our first Christmas together?”

“Our first Christmas,” he echoes dully, trying to keep his voice neutral, but she twists around to look at him, her elbow shifting into his gut. 

 “What’s wrong?” she asks. 

“It’s just, it’s _us._ Sometimes I can’t believe we made it this far. Mindy Lahiri and Danny Castellano. We’re probably the world’s least likely couple. It's amazing we haven't killed each other yet.”

“I feel like we had this exact conversation last year and you were proved wrong.” 

“Maybe I wasn’t wrong, maybe I just wasn’t right yet.”

“What does _that_ mean?” she asks him. “You’re being so weird.  If you really don’t want to watch this, we can watch your old-timey movie.”

“That’s not, it’s fine,” he says, trying to decide if he’s relieved or irritated that his efforts at goading her into a fight are failing. “I really don’t mind.” 

But by the time, the British guy is dancing through his apartment, Danny has finished off the only two beers left in her apartment, and switched over to scotch.  For not the first time, he wishes she didn’t have such shockingly bad taste in hard alcohol. 

“This is ridiculous,” he says, twisting his tumbler in his hands. “I can’t believe anybody would want to get married after watching this movie.” 

Mindy gives him a funny look. “Okay, Scrooge. Maybe slow your roll with the drinks.” 

He drains the rest of his glass and staggers towards her bedroom.   He’s not in the mood for the happy ending and inevitable engagement.   

A stab of anger goes through him at all of Hollywood for making marriage an end-goal.  It’s not a cure; it’s not a panacea.  Marriage is a room without windows that gets smaller every day. It’s just another thing that can be broken.

When Mindy slips into bed next to him, after somehow managing to find every creaky floorboard and every noisy spring, he pretends he’s already asleep. 

 

 

* * *

 

_December 20 th_

 

At lunch, she gets him his favorite sub without asking, remembering to forgo the mayo and add extra mustard, and he knows it’s right. He dashes out of the office to buy a ring, ignoring Beverly’s shocked expression and the long line of patients standing in the waiting room.

The ring is enormous and not to his taste, and he hopes that means she’ll love it.  It’s the least financially responsible thing he’s ever done, and that feels right too. He and Mindy have never been about common sense.

He thinks about the first time they kissed, all instinct and heat, how sometimes he thinks it was the only true thing he’d ever done. He remembers the first time she let him peel off her clothing, how warm her skin was, how she wrapped her arms around him.  How it felt like finally, finally coming home.

  

* * *

 

 

_December 22nd  
_

“So where are you keeping it? I would’ve seen it at your apartment. Is it somewhere in the office? As your beloved girlfriend, I think you owe me a sneak peek.” 

“What?” he asks. 

“The gingerbread house, of course,” she says, beaming at him.  It’s his favorite smile, no artifice; just pure Mindy sweetness. It’s a smile that makes him want to build her a gingerbread palace, and simultaneously, in equal measure, to smash all of her saccharine visions. 

The worst part of him wins. It almost always does.

“Just because I’ve liked making gingerbread houses before, it doesn’t mean I want to do keep doing that forever,” he says in a panicked tone, his voice sputtering on forever _._ “I don’t like feeling like I have to do it. That’s a lot of pressure, for the holidays.  People always say it’s the most difficult season.”

“Geez, calm down,” says Mindy, pinching his arm.

“You don’t have to do anything. But if you’re not doing one, you have to help me hang the decorations later,” she chirps as she struts out of his office. 

The thing is, he did start one. It’s sitting in his guest bathroom, which Mindy never goes into, since she claims it smells like moldy cheese. 

And it’s not a house, it’s a Manhattan apartment building that looks just like hers, with room on the top for a ring to slot in. But the bread wouldn’t bend the right way, and he couldn’t find candy that looked like proper bricks, and it felt like a sign. If he can’t even get the gesture right, the rest of it seems completely out of his reach.  Last year, he managed it, but he didn’t completely know what it meant then.

But he stays and helps her with decorations anyway. It was inevitable. Even before he loved her, or before he knew he loved her or maybe even when he was still deciding if he liked her, this was the kind of thing that he would’ve been suckered into.  

She’s leaning against the wall, wearing a bright red tight dress cinched with something sparkly. She looks like a Christmas ornament. Her heels rise out of her impractical pumps as she arches onto her tippy toes, struggling to wind the tinsel around her bookshelves.

“Babe, a hand?” she asks.  

He ignores her. Instead he brushes her hair away from her neck and drops a lingering kiss there, right on the hard bump of her spine.

The dress has a deep V in the back, exposing a large swathe of dark skin, and he lays a long line of open-mouthed kisses from her neck to the curve of her shoulder blade. Slowly, he squeezes her ass, his fingers curling into her thigh, eliciting a breathy giggle from her.

“That’s not what I meant,” she says with a smirk, but she turns to meet him with a long lazy kiss, her tongue darting against his. Through the thin layer of clothing, her hips grind against his cock.  She pushes him backwards towards the desk, her feet slipping out of those heels.

There’s something enticing about her bare feet and he drops to his knees, laying a kiss on her calf, encircling her ankles with his hands. He doesn’t say _I love you_ but he thinks it, seals it into her skin. He wants to touch every inch of her. He wants to sear her with his mouth, brand her with his fingerprints. Her shins, the dimple of her knees, the mole on her left thigh. 

When he reaches her dress, he slides it up her legs, but he struggles to push it past her hips. Laughing, she twists to the side and reaches behind her. He hears a zipping noise and the dress falls away. 

“You and your weird zipper phobia,” she says, still smiling as she reaches down to pull him back to her mouth. Her breath is hot and sugar-sweet.  

With one hand, he yanks her underwear down.   His finger slips into her, crooked, and she’s already wet. He peels her bra back, his tongue working at her nipple at the same tempo that he hooks his finger in and out. She makes that low keening noise in the back of her throat that he loves. 

Never one to take without giving, Mindy unzips his pants, tugging them down to his knees.  Her fingers tease at the sensitive tip of his erection, before she wraps her palms around him, her hand moving in quick, jagged tugs, her long fingernails raking his skin. He wanted this to be slow, but his body is barreling ahead of him, and there’s already a frantic edge to her movements.

“You know we’ve never actually had sex in the office,” she says as her hands move from root to tip.  “We need to fix that.”

She pulls him up and bends over the desk, presenting herself to him, because that’s the proper fantasy for what she thinks this is, an office quickie. They’re always living out very different movies. 

He kicks off his pants and plants himself behind her, letting her hands guide his dick to the right angle, and then sinks in. The edge of his vision is already going dark, so all he can see is her ass, rising in front of him, pushing back into him. 

But she could be anyone. She could be a stranger. He wants to see her face, to watch her disappear into the sensation.

Regretfully, he pulls out, flipping her around so she’s facing him, her mouth making a small O.  Using the desk for leverage, ignoring the buckle of his knees, he slams into her.  She wraps her arms around his neck and lets him take the lead for once.

After that, it’s a blur, lights popping behind his eyes as his hips thrust into hers, struggling to close all the spaces between them.  It feels just like the first time, like finding a place in the world, like the end of everything before it. He doesn’t want to name it because he’s afraid of what it would be called.   

The only thing that breaks through his haze is the sound of her moans, and the sensation of his balls tightening, his entire body humming like a wire pulled taut. 

He sags into her, tasting the slick salt of her skin. 

“If I knew hanging decorations would get you this worked up, we would’ve done this weeks ago,” she says as she pinches his ass.

 

* * *

  

_December 24th_

 

He feels personally assaulted by the garlands. The Christmas music on loop wears on his last nerve. Even Betsy’s cookies seem offensively sweet. Jeremy is visibly anxious and keeps glancing over at Danny. 

For the first time in over a year, Danny locks the door on his office.  He sinks down into his chair, his fingers digging into his desk.  There’s a small box burning a hole in his pocket and he can feel his phone buzzing, and he knows, he knows it’s going to be her.

A wave of adrenaline crashes over him, leaving his heart doing a stutter-step and an acrid burn on his tongue. 

If this were somebody else, he would say it was a panic attack, but that’s not a weakness he’s willing to allow himself. 

He walks out of the office at a steady pace, trying to quiet the thudding in a chest, but once he’s on the street, it turns into a run, and by the time he’s reached the highway, he’s in a full sprint, careening between honking taxis. 

Danny sits down on a bench, his sides heaving. Something about the open skies, the lack of buildings looming on all sides is calming. He stares into the grey waters of the Hudson and tries to think of new ways to call himself a coward.

His dad taught him that the worst thing you can do is walk away, but Christina showed him there are worse things: you can stay and never be enough.  He wishes with every bone in his body that he knew which one this was. 

By the time she’s found him, his sweat has chilled on his skin and the sun is starting to disappear.   She sits down on the bench next to him, but she leaves a good twelve inches of space between them.  Room for the Holy Spirit, he thinks inanely. 

“Are you okay?” she asks. Her voice is quiet, cautious, like he’s a horse that could be spooked. 

 “Yeah,” he says. “I just, the Christmas festivities were getting a little over the top. It’s a _workplace_ , Mindy.”

“That’s enough,” she says, her hand waving in his face. “It’s not the decorations. You’ve been acting weird for weeks. Every time anybody says the word Christmas, you get this look on your face like somebody’s just told you Bruce Springsteen died.” 

“What is it? Are you too Catholic for Christmas parties? Do you really hate the Beyonce tree topper that much? Because I lied, I still have the angel from last year.” 

She looks at him expectantly, but he just tucks his hands between his knees and lets out a sharp breath that is clearly visible in the cold air.   

“I read your diary,” he says, finally. He sneaks at look at her, expecting an explosion or a flurry of harmless punches. Instead, a tiny frown appears on her forehead.

“That’s what all this is about?”

“You’re not mad?” he asks. 

“Oh you bet your ass, I’m mad,” she says. “But, I get it. You think I’ve never snooped in your apartment? I’m mostly jealous that _you_ don’t have a diary. Oh god – did you read the entry…”

She comes to a sudden stop, her eyes narrowing at him, as if she’s just noticed the seriousness of his expression. 

“I saw the entry where you said you wanted a proposal by Christmas.”

“Ohhh,” she says, her lips pursing. “Danny, it’s a _diary_. There’s lots of stuff in there that’s complete nonsense. I’m pretty sure I wrote a haiku about each of the Avenger’s butts.”

“But you do want that,” he says and it’s not a question.

“Yes,” she says after a moment’s hesitation. “But it doesn’t have to be like, today, today. Do you not want that?”

“I think so,” he says. His lips feel stiff with cold and it smells like snow.  “Eventually. I guess I hadn’t really thought about it much.”

“Well, maybe you should think about it.”

“How long do I have?”

“I don’t know. Arbor Day? Easter?” At his look, she says, “I’m kidding, Danny. But seriously, you’ve known me for seven years. What piece of information are you waiting for?”

Her voice is small and laced with hurt, and it feels like confirmation that he’s not cut out for this.  

“It’s not about you, Min,” he says gently. “I’ve been married. It wasn’t…the most fun experience. You don’t know how hard it can be.”

“I know plenty about _hard_ , Danny. I’m dating you, after all.” There’s a bitterness to her voice, something sharp, something he put there.

She’s quiet after that, and side-by-side, they watch the sun disappear into New Jersey, leaving behind a deep smear of purple. He scoots closer to her so he can feel the heat of her skin through her tights. 

In response, she places her hands on his knee, drumming her long fingers against him . “You really thought that if you didn’t propose to me, I was just going to leave you without a word?” 

He’s quiet and he realizes that yes, he did think that, but of course Mindy’s never done anything without a word. 

“Were you going to do it?” she asks. 

“I don’t know,” he admits.  When he shifts his weight, the hard edge of the box digs into his leg.

“Please don’t marry me to keep me, Danny. I deserve more than that.” 

“What if I want to keep you?” he asks.

“Then you need to want to marry me,” she says, giving him a small, sad smile.  

“Eventually,” she adds, reaching for his hand, because even when she’s mad at him, she’s always touching him, like maybe closeness will cure them.   

“Did you notice how well I handled this?” she asks, nudging his shoulder and there’s an abrupt switch to her tone. She’s letting him off the hook and he has no idea why. 

“I did,” he says. 

He doesn’t try to claim he’s handled anything well. He’s sweated through a hundred t-shirts this month. He’s bought and returned two rings. He’s kept one and not given it to her.  He’s developed a paralyzing fear of carols.  

“Do you still want to come to the Island tonight?” he asks.

“Of course,” she says. “Your mom promised me three different kinds of cake, Danny, and five different kinds of meat. Five. She better come through.” 

She stands up, offering him her hand and he takes it, feeling her fingers lace through his, lets her lead them home.

 

* * *

 

_December 25th_

  

Even before he opens his eyes, he knows it’s snowing. All he can see through the crack in the curtains is the blinding glare of the sun bouncing off the vast whiteness.

He twists away from the warmth of her limbs, remembering to savor that she's still there, that he still has time to screw this up, and walks to the window, pressing his hand against the cold glass. The yard is completely blanketed with fresh snow. Some small part of him, the part that never got to be a proper child, feels a hum of excitement at a white Christmas. It feels like a clean slate. Like something new. 

He glances back at the woman still sleeping in his bed, tangled in sheets, and he hopes that it’s a beginning and not an end.

 

 

 


End file.
